Arts and Literature

In 1751, at Barbadoes, Washington "was treated with a play ticket to see
the Tragedy of George Barnwell acted: the character of Barnwell and
several others was said to be well perform'd there was Musick a Dapted and
regularly conducted." This presumptively was the lad's first visit to the
playhouse, but from that time it was one of his favorite amusements. At
first his ledger shows expenditures of "Cash at the Play House 1/3," which
proves that his purse would bear the cost of only the cheapest seats;
but later he became more extravagant in this respect, and during the
Presidency he used the drama for entertaining, his ledger giving many
items of tickets bought. A type entry in Washington's diary is, "Went
to the play in the evening—sent tickets to the following ladies and
gentlemen and invited them to seats in my box, viz:—Mrs. Adams (lady of
the Vice-President,) General Schuyler and lady, Mr. King and lady, Majr.
Butler and lady, Colo Hamilton and lady, Mrs. Green—all of whom accepted
and came except Mrs. Butler, who was indisposed."

Maclay describes the first of these theatre parties as follows: "I
received a ticket from the President of the United States to use his box
this evening at the theatre, being the first of his appearances at the
playhouse since his entering on his office. Went The President, Governor
of the State, foreign Ministers, Senators from New Hampshire, Connecticut,
Pennsylvania, M.[aryland] and South Carolina; and some ladies in the same
box. I am old, and notices or attentions are lost on me. I could have
wished some of my dear children in my place; they are young and would have
enjoyed it. Long might they live to boast of having been seated in
the same box with the first Character in the world. The play was the
'School for Scandal,' I never liked it; indeed, I think it an indecent
representation before ladies of character and virtue. Farce, the 'Old
Soldier.' The house greatly crowded, and I thought the players acted well;
but I wish we had seen the Conscious Lovers, or some one that inculcated
more prudential manners."

Of the play, or rather interlude, of the "Old Soldier" its author, Dunlap,
gives an amusing story. It turned on the home-coming of an old soldier,
and, like the topical song of to-day, touched on local affairs:

"When Wignell, as Darby, recounts what had befallen him in America, in New
York, at the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the inauguration of
the president, the interest expressed by the audience in the looks and the
changes of countenance of this great man [Washington] became intense. He
smiled at these lines, alluding to the change in the government—

There too I saw some mighty pretty shows;
A revolution, without blood or blows,
For, as I understood, the cunning elves,
The people all revolted from themselves.

But at the lines—

A man who fought to free the land from we,
Like me, had left his farm, a-soldiering to go:
But having gain'd his point, he had like me,
Return'd his own potato ground to see.
But there he could not rest. With one accord
He's called to be a kind of—not a lord—
I don't know what, he's not a great man, sure,
For poor men love him just as he were poor.
They love him like a father or a brother,
DERMOT.
As we poor Irishmen love one another.

The president looked serious; and when Kathleen asked,

How looked he, Darby? Was he short or tall?

his countenance showed embarrassment, from the expectation or one of those
eulogiums which, he had been obliged to hear on many public occasions, and
which must doubtless have been a severe trial to his feelings: but Darby's
answer that he had not seen him, because he had mistaken a man 'all lace
and glitter, botherum and shine,' for him, until all the show had passed,
relieved the hero from apprehension of farther personality, and he
indulged in that which was with him extremely rare, a hearty laugh."

Washington did not even despise amateur performances. As already
mentioned, he expressed a wish to take part in "Cato" himself in 1758, and
a year before he had subscribed to the regimental "players at Fort
Cumberland," His diary shows that in 1768 the couple at Mount Vernon "& ye
two children were up to Alexandria to see the Inconstant or 'the way to win
him' acted," which was probably an amateur performance. Furthermore, Duer
tells us that "I was not only frequently admitted to the presence of this
most august of men, in propria persona, but once had the honor of
appearing before him as one of the dramatis personae in the tragedy of
Julius Caesar, enacted by a young 'American Company,' (the theatrical
corps then performing in New York being called the 'Old American Company')
in the garret of the Presidential mansion, wherein before the magnates of
the land and the elite of the city, I performed the part of Brutus to the
Cassius of my old school-fellow, Washington Custis."

The theatre was by no means the only show that appealed to Washington. He
went to the circus when opportunity offered, gave nine shillings to a "man
who brought an elk as a show," three shillings and ninepence "to hear the
Armonica," two dollars for tickets "to see the automatum," treated the
"Ladies to ye Microcosm" and paid to see waxworks, puppet shows, a dancing
bear, and a lioness and tiger. Nor did he avoid a favorite Virginia
pastime, but attended cockfights when able. His frequent going to concerts
has been already mentioned.

Washington seems to have been little of a reader except of books on
agriculture, which he bought, read, and even made careful abstracts of
many, and on this subject alone did he ever seem to write from pleasure.
As a lad, he notes in his journal that he is reading The Spectator and a
history of England, but after those two brief entries there is no further
mention of books or reading in his daily memorandum of "where and how my
time is spent." In his ledger, too, almost the least common expenditure
entered is one for books. Nor do his London invoices, so far as extant,
order any books but those which treated of farming and horses. In the
settlement of the Custis estate, "I had no particular reason for keeping
and handing down to his son, the books of the late Colo Custis saving that
I thought it would be taking the advantage of a low appraisement, to make
them my own property at it, and that to sell them was not an object."

With the broadening that resulted from the command of the army more
attention was paid to books, and immediately upon the close of the
Revolution Washington ordered the following works: "Life of Charles the
Twelfth," "Life of Louis the Fifteenth," "Life and Reign of Peter the
Great," Robertson's "History of America," Voltaire's "Letters," Vertot's
"Revolution of Rome" and "Revolution of Portugal," "Life of Gustavus
Adolphus," Sully's "Memoirs," Goldsmith's "Natural History," "Campaigns of
Marshal Turenne," Chambaud's "French and English Dictionary," Locke "on
the Human Understanding," and Robertson's "Charles the Fifth." From this
time on he was a fairly constant book-buyer, and subscribed as a "patron"
to a good many forthcoming works, while many were sent him as gifts. On
politics he seems to have now read with interest; yet in 1797, after his
retirement from the Presidency, in writing of the manner in which he spent
his hours, he said, "it may strike you that in this detail no mention is
made of any portion of time allotted to reading. The remark would be just,
for I have not looked into a book since I came home, nor shall I be able
to do it until I have discharged my workmen; probably not before the
nights grow long when possibly I may be looking into Doomsday book." There
can be no doubt that through all his life Washington gave to reading only
the time he could not use on more practical affairs.

His library was a curious medley of books, if those on military science
and agriculture are omitted. There is a fair amount of the standard
history of the day, a little theology, so ill assorted as to suggest gifts
rather than purchases, a miscellany of contemporary politics, and a very
little belles-lettres. In political science the only works in the
slightest degree noticeable are Smith's "Wealth of Nations," "The
Federalist," and Rousseau's "Social Compact," and, as the latter was in
French, it could not have been read. In lighter literature Homer,
Shakespeare, and Burns, Lord Chesterfield, Swift, Smollett, Fielding, and
Sterne, and "Don Quixote," are the only ones deserving notice. It is
worthy of mention that Washington's favorite quotation was Addison's "'Tis
not in mortals to command success," but he also utilized with considerable
aptitude quotations from Shakespeare and Sterne. There were half a dozen
of the ephemeral novels of the day, but these were probably Mrs.
Washington's, as her name is written in one, and her husband's in none.
Writing to his grandson, Washington warned him that "light reading (by
this, I mean books of little importance) may amuse for the moment, but
leaves nothing solid behind."

One element of Washington's reading which cannot be passed over without
notice is that of newspapers. In his early life he presumably read the
only local paper of the time (the Virginia Gazette), for when an
anonymous writer, "Centinel," in 1756, charged that Washington's regiment
was given over to drunkenness and other misbehavior, he drew up a reply,
which he sent with ten shillings to the newspaper, but the printer
apparently declined to print it, for it never appeared.

After the Revolution he complained to his Philadelphia agent, "I have such
a number of Gazettes, crowded upon me (many without orders) that they are
not only expensive, but really useless; as my other avocations will not
afford me time to read them oftentimes, and when I do attempt it, find
them more troublesome, than profitable; I have therefore to beg, if you
Should get Money into your hands on Acct of the Inclosed Certificate, that
you would be so good as to pay what I am owing to Messrs Dunlap &
Claypoole, Mr. Oswald & Mr. Humphrey's. If they consider me however as
engaged for the year, I am Content to let the matter run on to the
Expiration of it" During the Presidency he subscribed to the Gazette of
the United States, Brown's Gazette, Dunlap's American Advertiser, the
Pennsylvania Gazette, Bache's Aurora, and the New York Magazine,
Carey's Museum, and the Universal Asylum, though at this time he
"lamented that the editors of the different gazettes in the Union do not
more generally and more correctly (instead of stuffing their papers with
scurrility and nonsensical declamation, which few would read if they were
apprised of the contents,) publish the debates in Congress on all great
national questions."

Presently, for personal and party reasons, certain of the papers began to
attack him, and Jefferson wrote to Madison that the President was
"extremely affected by the attacks made and kept up on him in the public
papers. I think he feels these things more than any person I ever met
with." Later the Secretary of State noted that at an interview Washington
"adverted to a piece in Freneau's paper of yesterday, he said that he
despised all their attacks on him personally, but that there never had
been an act of government ... that paper had not abused ... He was
evidently sore and warm." At a cabinet meeting, too, according to the same
writer, "the Presidt was much inflamed, got into one of those passions
when he cannot command himself, ran on much on the personal abuse which
had been bestowed on him, defied any man on earth to produce a single act
of his since he had been in the govmt which was not done on the purest
motives, that he had never repented but once the having slipped the moment
of resigning his office, & that was every moment since, that by god he
had rather be in his grave than in his present situation. That he had
rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world and yet that
they were charging him with wanting to be a king. That that rascal
Freneau sent him 3 of his papers every day, as if he thought he would
become the distributor of his papers, that he could see in this nothing
but an impudent design to insult him. He ended in this high tone. There
was a pause."

To correspondents, too, Washington showed how keenly he felt the attacks
upon him, writing that "the publications in Freneau's and Bache's papers
are outrages on common decency; and they progress in that style in
proportion as their pieces are treated with contempt, and are passed by in
silence, by those at whom they are aimed," and asked "in what will this
abuse terminate? The result, as it respects myself, I care not; for I have
consolation within, that no earthly efforts can deprive me of, and that
is, that neither ambitious nor interested motives have influenced my
conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore however barbed and well
pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I
am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed."

On another occasion he said, "I am beginning to receive, what I had
made my mind up for on this occasion, the abuse of Mr. Bache, and his
correspondents." He wrote a friend, "if you read the Aurora of this city,
or those gazettes, which are under the same influence, you cannot but have
perceived with what malignant industry and persevering falsehoods I am
assailed, in order to weaken if not destroy the confidence of the public."

When he retired from office he apparently cut off his subscriptions to
papers, for a few months later he inquired, "what is the character of
Porcupine's Gazette? I had thought when I left Philadelphia, of ordering
it to be sent to me; then again, I thought it best not to do it; and
altho' I should like to see both his and Bache's, the latter may, under
all circumstances, be the best decision; I mean not subscribing to either
of them." This decision to have no more to do with papers did not last,
for on the night he was seized with his last illness Lear describes how
"in the evening the papers having come from the post office, he sat in the
room with Mrs. Washington and myself, reading them, till about nine
o'clock when Mrs. Washington went up into Mrs. Lewis's room, who was
confined, and left the General and myself reading the papers. He was very
cheerful; and, when he met with anything which he thought diverting or
interesting, he would read it aloud as well as his hoarseness would
permit. He desired me to read to him the debates of the Virginia Assembly,
on the election of a Senator and Governor; which I did—and, on hearing
Mr. Madison's observations respecting Mr. Monroe, he appeared much
affected, and spoke with some degree of asperity on the subject, which I
endeavored to moderate, as I always did on such occasions."